What to expect visually from PFO?

[Ryan Dancey]

This is an Alpha

Getting "Alpha Access" to an MMO turned into a marketing thing and so a bunch of companies monetized their late-stage beta testing by calling them "Alpha tests". I can't fix that.

We could make up a whole new term for what we're doing now, but that ship sailed with the horse from the barn. We did make up a term for "Beta" and while we've backslid a couple of times in general I've been pretty ruthless about making people in the company say "Early Enrollment" when they want to say "Beta".

C'est la vie. Can't spend braincycles worrying about stuff that can't be fixed.

[Crash_00]

Yes it was a very old alpha photo (as in an actual alpha, not a demo labelled an alpha) from 2002. That was the point. Those were the "12 year old graphics" you were harping about.

GW is not trying to compete with things like Landmark. It has been transparent about this from the beginning. EE is the minimum viable product. Anyone that was expecting more than the minimum viable product from the minimum viable product probably has bigger issues than their unrealistic expectations.

[Pryde]

Crash_00 wrote:

Yes it was a very old alpha photo (as in an actual alpha, not a demo labelled an alpha) from 2002. That was the point. Those were the "12 year old graphics" you were harping about.

GW is not trying to compete with things like Landmark. It has been transparent about this from the beginning. EE is the minimum viable product. Anyone that was expecting more than the minimum viable product from the minimum viable product probably has bigger issues than their unrealistic expectations.

I'm not really talking about the EE so much as I'm interesting in where the game will be going visually (the lowest/minimal) to the finished product (the apex). Hence the title "What to expect visually from PFO" and not "Wtf this game looks horrible". Ryan already answered the question in what direction they're going, so we can only hope they get there. A lot of the people I talk to, trying to get interested in the game, they look at the released footage, and they say to me "Well, the game looks interesting, but visually, I don't really see it getting that much better".

[Ryan Dancey]

I created this graphic as a way to show the arc of the progress of the game.

Evolution of terrain over time

[Kitsune Aou]

Ryan Dancey wrote:

I created this graphic as a way to show the arc of the progress of the game.

Evolution of terrain over time

Very nice. Thanks for this, it does show how well things are progressing, and should give some people hope that it can improve [---this much---] over the next couple years, too.

Also, "BigWorld Client?"

And "FEEL THE BURN!" followed by "Where's my phallic codpiece?" are a great couple of quotes in sequence. :P

[Crash_00]

BigWorld is what they used for the tech demo. They changed to unity after it was bought up by wargaming (the people that do World of Tanks), because they didn't know if they would be able to give enough support with the other World of ... games that are on deck.